Demon’s Souls: How to Upgrade Weapons

Demon’s Souls is a tough game, and in order to keep up with the constantly increasing difficulty curve, it’s essential to make sure you are increasing the level of your equipment at a steady pace. Let’s take a look at how to upgrade weapons in Demon’s Souls

How to Upgrade Weapons in Demon’s Souls

In order to upgrade your weapons, you are going to need to become very well acquainted with two gruff fellows, Blacksmith Baldwin and Blacksmith Ed.

Blacksmith Baldwin can be found with the other outcasts at the Nexus, the hub world at the heart of Demon’s Souls. By talking to him, you are given a list of options, and it is here that you will do the actual task of upgrading your gear.

It should be noted that Baldwin can also repair your gear, which is something you should keep in mind because even the most powerful weapon in your arsenal will eventually become useless if it isn’t properly maintained.

Upgrading weapons is a process that raises a particular item’s base damage, and also its scaling (the amount of damage as dealt as determined by your relevant stats), after a certain point. In order to upgrade a weapon, you are going to need both souls and upgrade materials, of which there are several.

The most basic materials are Hardstones and Sharpstones, used to power up Strength and Dexterity-based weapons respectively. Both Hardstones and Sharpstones come in four different sizes: Shard, Large Shard, Chunk and Pure.

Each upgrade will cost more than the previous, and use different sized materials. So, upgrading a weapon to +1 will require three Shards, but the jump from 6+ to 7+ will require six Shards, 5 Large Shards, and a Chunk. A standard weapon can be increased all the way up to +10 if you so desire.

Where things get kind of crazy, and why Demon’s Souls, in particular, is lauded for its build variety, is that you can use a myriad of different Stones to change the element and effect of a particular weapon and take it down an entirely different route, and this is where Blacksmith Ed comes into play.

Located in the Burrow King Archstone (World 2-1), Ed is able to change the Upgrade path of a particular weapon in some pretty weird and wonderful ways.

Reaching him means progressing a good way through the level. Eventually, you will emerge from tunnels and be higher up on the cliffside from where you began the stage.

There you will find an elevator that you can activate, which functions as the primary shortcut for the runup to the boss of 2-1. If you stand on the moving platform and let it take you all the way down to the bottom, you will find yourself in Ed’s forge, and be able to avail yourself of his services.

So say you have a Long Sword +1, and you come across a Clearstone. By talking to Blacksmith Ed, you can change the Upgrade tree of the weapon to Blessed, which reduces the scaling of the weapon (so that it does slightly less damage) but will constantly regenerate your HP as long as it is equipped.

Thats just one example, and it is up to you to decide how you want build your character, and how you want to play.

There are a total of 12 paths aside from the base Regular path to choose from, provided you find the correlating Stone needed to initiate the change. This means you can further tailor your playstyle, and create an armory of weapons suitable for any situation.

Thats it, everything you need to know about how to upgrade weapons in Demon’s Souls. For the latest news and other helpful Demon’s Souls guides, we’ve got you covered right here.